The road to recovery starts here! Trusted, confidential help available 24/7. Speak with an addiction treatment specialist anytime. Please call us now at 800-815-3910!

Heroin Help.

by Samantha
(California )

I am in a serious relationship with a great person but the only thing that has been affecting him is his heroin addiction. He has admitted before that he wants to stop and that he has considered rehab but is too afraid to lose what little he has.

He has asked me to help him cope with him by hanging out with him and keeping him distracted from thinking about it but i don't know what other things i could do. I try to keep him positive and he has my full support but i was wondering if there was other tricks or tips that someone could give me to help him out. He's managed to stay clean for an good amount of time but then something really upsets him and he falls back.

Comments for Heroin Help.

I am an addictions mental health counselor and the approach your partner is asking you to help him with is not likely to work or stop his heroin addiction.

Going to rehab will give him back his life and isn't going to take anything from him. The Salvation Army has GREAT free programs so it will cost him SIGNIFICANTLY less money to stop buying heroin and start going to rehab.

Heroin addiction is a DEADLY disease of the brain, which often totally impairs the logical reasoning of the addict. Don't allow him to manipulate you with ideas of how he can stay clean that won't work. He is likely addicted to heroin and will make any excuse not to go to rehab and get clean.

I think you should continue to be totally supportive of him but also not enable his addiction. You need to tell him that he must go into rehab to end his addiction otherwise the future for both of you is VERY grim. You can't distract him or love him enough to end his addiction.

Please consider going to Al-anon and begin working the 12-steps, then invite him to join you and learn about addiction together so that you can both agree upon an approach to ending his addiction that might actually work.

Don't allow him to transfer the responsibility for his heroin relapse to you. From what you've said it sounds like you think that if you are good enough at distracting him he won't use. This is a lie and can harm you more than you realize.

It may sound like I'm being harsh but heroin addiction is a VERY harsh and harmful disease that you must try to help him to end.

"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened." - Matthew 7:7-8